Cognitivism started it's life with a very basic, elegant assumption - that our brain might do exactly what a computer does - process information in the form of representations. As it usually happens with elegant assumptions due to the fact that they are easy to keep in mind, use and apply, the hypothesis picked up. Still the faults started showing soon - the new mind as a processing-information machine metaphor could not explain some very important things: consciousness, phenomenology, meaning.
It seems to me that in the future, postcognitivism might look back at older disciplines like semiotics and hermeneutics, or not-so-old ones, like communication studies, and borrow in some of their metaphors and objects of study to fully mature itself.
What are the crevices and to-be-patched zones of cognitivism?
First of all, argue post-cognitivists, there is context to be taken into account in whatever information-processing matter. We can't speak of information-processing without considering the effect that the information has on the system, as the system might not encode information at all, but meaning. The exact difference between humans and machines, no matter how performant they are at information processing, lays here - information makes a difference to humans, but not to machines. If information is irrelevant for a human being, it fails to excite interest therefore gather attention and other resources needed to be processed.
We should look at information-processing the right way around, which is we created information-processing machines by abstracting a feature that the human mind has away from the human body - rather how we created robotic arms through abstracting away from the mechanics and functionality of the human arm. That doesn't mean that robotic arms can explain all the functions of the human arm.
Still, it's easier to analyse the things and features that we abstracted away, by the simple fact that we can look at them, observe them, talk about them with greater ease - as we are detached from them. And sometimes these objects are a useful source of backwards reflection and analogy, however we should avoid falling in the trap of considering them all explanatory for
all human thinking.
In human thinking, the process of information processing is called upon mostly because the information is relevant in some way. There is lots of previous information in the system, which colors the new processing, or even the questions that are enquired, the direction of the processing itself. And even partial results might invoke massive changes in the brain's state, as a result of the meaning that possible interpretations might have for the system.
Then there is the inherent problem of the basic cell that information processing is performed upon: the representation. Representations, unlike cells in biology, are a theoretical construct, and a slippery one at that. They take the role of more complex symbols upon which actions are to be performed. But unlike computer memory, the human memory is not that keen in making very detailed representations, carrying them around and manipulating them. Rather the human brain is particularly good at carrying around smaller cognitive loads, and using them in a flexible manner, more appropriate for online requests upon a cognitive processing system.
Representationalism and the idea that there is such a thing as representation came to the fore to complete the analogy of information processing - which must happen on something.
The question of imperfect representation calls to the fore the reality of what human representation might be like. If it is based on meaning, experience and continuous reconstruction of perception according to possible or previously encountered species of meaning and experience, then representation becomes a rather very biased tool.
Considering what it has been said before, it striking that cognitivism wants to talk about perfect cognition in a sense that is not necessarily true for humans, but might only be true to machines.
So if we would consider the principles of cognitivism as being part of an attempt to abstract away perfect cognitive principles and perhaps instantiate them in thinking machines, cognitivism would seem to hit the mark more, rather then with explaining to us human cognition.
But it gets better, in a sense that our perfect view of cognition as information-processing might not be that efficient after all.
A detailed description of that on the next post.
Copyright - Ana-Maria Olteteanu 2011
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